Does anybody care besides me? The App Store Omits a Hyphen

That should be “Twenty-Five More” Similar:Bureaucrats Put the Squeeze on College NewspapersFew school newspapers are financially in…AcademiaWriting skill matters in the workforce.BusinessEpilogue to Rossum's Universal RobotsMy big finish as Alquist in a Zoom-based…DramaAn Opt Out Letter That Speaks to All ParentsOne household notifies the authorities t…CultureThoreau's Cellphone ExperimentWhen I teach “Intro to Literary Study,” …AcademiaLoved…

Quick Reaction to the Google Books App: No highlighting? No thank you.

If you like highlighing, you can pass on Google Books. The press coverage I’ve seen is mostly about how Google’s new ebook store will likely threatens Amazon, but Google’s reader software is just meh. All politics about Google’s digitization of library archives aside, I love the ready access to full-page scans from out-of-copyright titles. The…

Sharing music files: Tactics of a challenge to the industry

Fascinating exploration of the relationship between official responses to torture and official responses to file-sharing, and possibly a useful way to introduce a big-picture concept (the issue of justice and its relationship to power) to students who have a strong opinions about the importance of their own file-sharing activities. [P]owerful perpetrators commonly use many or…

Transformation of e-mail is under way

E-mail may not totally disappear, but experts say in five to 10 years, it may look far different than it does today. “Within five years, we think the questions about social networking versus e-mail will be largely moot, as the two elements will have been fused together,” said the report by Gartner analysts Matt Cain…

How Broken is Game Journalism? An Analysis of Three Gaming Sites

I give this article an 8/10. Oh, look over there, an explosion! Cool! “Well, personally I feel that gaming journalism needs a big shake up,” Walton said. “Much of the current ‘journalism’ consists of re-worded press releases. Essentially, the publishers have most of the power and control the flow of information to the press. Given…

Medill faculty approve school's name change

Medill faculty members voted earlier this month in favor of changing the name of the Medill School of Journalism to “The Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications,” professors confirmed last week. The change, approved by a 38-5 vote, will now be sent to the Board of Trustees for approval this spring. Conversations about…

Nasa reveals bacteria that can live on arsenic instead of phosphorus

A bacterium discovered in a Californian lake appears to be able to use arsenic in its molecular make-up instead of phosphorus – even incorporating the toxic chemical into its DNA. That’s significant because it goes against the general rule that all terrestrial life depends on six elements: oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, sulphur and phosphorus. These…

Boston Review — Onnesha Roychoudhuri: Books After Amazon

What happens when an industry concerned with the production of culture is beholden to a company with the sole goal of underselling competitors? Amazon is indisputably the king of books, but the issue remains, as Charlie Winton, CEO of the independent publisher Counterpoint Press puts it, “what kind of king they’re going to be.” A…

Comedian (and Epic Movie Actor) Leslie Nielsen, 1926-2010

It might be a stretch to call “The Poseidon Adventure” science fiction. It was part of the all-star disaster genre, thus giving Nielsen impeccable credentials when it came to his most famous movie roles, in the Airplane! series. I actually prefer his role in Forbidden Planet, but that’s just me. Nielsen along with co-star Anne…

Abandoned Six Flags New Orleans Tour

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Dying on Facebook

“Last week, his cousin announced on his Facebook wall that he was missing and asked everybody to contact her if we’d seen him,” my friend told me. “The next day she wrote that they’d found him, dead. Just like that.” We’re finally getting used to learning about our friends’ and acquaintances’ lives through Facebook. Will…

Vanity Post

My entry in the IMDB, as viewed on my iPod Touch. Similar:The Great Works of SoftwareI realized that each one of these techno…AestheticsJudge: Apple conspired to fix eBook prices.Judge: Apple conspired to fix eBook pric…BooksAfter decades lost, Star Trek’s original Enterprise model may have been foundLong before sci-fi shows created their v…DesignAssembling wall units to…

Uniforms

The second and, sadly, last of Douglas Johnson’s play-a-day experiment. (The three open the box and rummage in it, and pull out shirts with the Starfleet insignia.) DARNELL: Mine’s blue! TOMLINSON: Mine’s yellow! RAYBURN: Mine’s red! (DARNELL and TOMLINSON cough uneasily, and sidestep away from RAYBURN.) RAYBURN: Oh, very good. Top notch observational comedy there,…

Journalism in the Age of Data: A Video Report on Data Visualization

Journalists are coping with the rising information flood by borrowing data visualization techniques from computer scientists, researchers and artists. Some newsrooms are already beginning to retool their staffs and systems to prepare for a future in which data becomes a medium. But how do we communicate with data, how can traditional narratives be fused with…

If They're Coming To Get You, Barbara, Click Here.

The other day, I was thinking about how much I like YouTube, how much I like classic Choose-Your-Own-Adventure narratives, and how much I like zombie films. And I thought to myself, what a shame that someone hasn’t found a way to let me enjoy all three, at the same time. Well wouldn’t you know… Similar:How…

Writing with the iPad

Seton Hill English major Theresa Conley describes capturing poetry inspiration with her iPad, and my colleague Laura Patterson describes how she uses the iPad to help students plan their writing. From a collection of clips on the website iPad on the HIll. Similar:Students Speak Up: Trust Us With DevicesThe students who are, in the…

Livetweeting Buck Rogers "The Plot to Kill a City" (Part 1)

About to start tweeting #BuckRogers “The Plot to Kill a City” (The kids watched “Vegas in Space” without me.) Frank Gorshin… And Markie Post are guest stars. #BuckRogers Haha, #BuckRogers hits on a blonde who turns around and has a huge elephant nose. Then he shoots out a chandelier to kill a baddie. Thank goodness…

Writing in the Age of Distraction

There is never perfect silence, or happiness. Until my kids have gone to college and are out of the house, I will never get a full weekend of unbroken time to concentrate on writing (or reading, or coding, or whatever). I used to be able to bang out a blog entry or mark a few…

Livetweeting Buck Rogers: Planet of the Slave Girls

Soon I’ll start livetweeting the first episode of the 1970s #BuckRogers series. I livetweeted the series-opening movie a few weeks ago.http://jerz.setonhill.edu/weblog/2010/10/livetweeting_the_1970s_buck_ro_1/ Remote battery died. Crisis! #BuckRogers Planet of the Slave Girls. Clearly they are going for high concept SF. Still, Buster Crabbe and was that Jack Palance? #BuckRogers Nameless, sweaty extra under attack by pirates……

Interactive Fiction Projects

Recently I noticed a cluster of student blogs on interactive fiction. Interactive Fiction: Literature or Not? My Experiences with Interactive Fiction IF Can Be Quite the Process Similar:Joe Turner's Come and Gone (August Wilson's Century Cycle, 2 of 10)August Wilson’s Century Cycle > Spoi…BooksAmusing Reference to ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ Imagine a scenario in which circumstan…AestheticsIn…